I'm assuming this was the Ullman book you took a look at - https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Automata-Languages-Computation-Addison-Wesley/dp/020102988X/ http

I'm assuming this was the Ullman book you took a look at - https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Automata-Languages-Computation-Addison-Wesley/dp/020102988X/ https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Automata-Languages-Compu... If not, it's good but pretty dense. If you didn't like that, then I would recommend this one - https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Michael-Sipser/dp/113318779X https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Theory-Computation-Micha... Sipser has a lot less notation and more english explanations of the concepts. I picked it up and read most of it after graduating - it's pretty easy to follow (though if I recall, I think some of the terminology around Turing complete languages differed slightly from the Ullman text).